A Time to Live A Time to Die
by The Doctor Dancing
Summary: She promised him forever. But when a drunk driver runs Rose Tyler off of the highway; their forever is cut short. Unless the doctor risks everything to go back in time and change what happened…
1. Forever

The doctor was just finishing buttoning his suit when he saw it. His own reflection was in the mirror, only there were two.

"What?" he demanded, spinning around. The other version of him remained.

"Please," it begged. "Please it's important. You've got to-" And then it was gone.

The doctor shook his head, wondering if he was losing it completely. How had another version of him landed in his bedroom? Was it the version of him from the parallel world crossing through?

"Did you say something?"

The doctor turned to see Rose, already dressed and wearing her Torchwood ID. He smiled, thrilled to see her return it. He would never tire of seeing her every day. "No," he answered. "Well, yes," he corrected.

"Which is it then?" Rose asked, amused.

"I… Something strange just happened."

"Strange as in work-related?" Rose asked, instantly serious.

"No," the doctor replied. "I saw… me."

"Is it possible you just looked in the mirror?" she suggested cheekily.

He grinned half-heartedly before continuing, "No, there was another version of me. Just there." He indicated the place where he had seen himself. "And then he disappeared."

"Did he say or do anything?" Rose asked, frowning.

"He was trying to give me a warning," the doctor said. "But I don't understand how he could be here."

"Was it… the other one?" Rose asked hesitantly. "The doctor that's with Donna?"

"You know, I thought it might be at first," the doctor mused, but I don't know how he could have landed here now that all of the rifts have closed, and without the TARDIS too."

"Well, how else could another version of you appear here in our bedroom and then vanish?" Rose asked.

The doctor reflected on how insane their conversation would sound to most people. "I have no idea," he said. "But I'm going to go run some scans in the TARDIS, see if there's a rift in the fabric of the universe somewhere."

"We'll be late," Rose sighed.

The doctor glanced down at his own Torchwood ID. He hadn't much liked the idea of working for them, but after a few months he had accepted a job there. He tended to get caught up in travelling, and now that he didn't have such a long life, he couldn't just pop out for a few years and return to the same day. So he had also gotten a job at Torchwood, to keep his mind busy without travelling (except for when he was with Rose, of course). And after all, he had worked for UNIT with some success earlier in his life too.

"This is important," the doctor said.

"I agree," Rose said, nodding. "I'll call in."

"Let me run those tests first," he countered. "Then we can still go in late if they turn up nothing."

Not long after, the doctor was frowning in the console room, Rose looking over his shoulder. "There's no evidence of any rifts," he said. "Well," he immediately added, tilting his head, "There is one rift. Just one small rift, but it's not between worlds. It's just like a small blip in time, nothing that could allow another version of me to cross from a parallel world."

"Okay," Rose agreed. "Then, Doctor," she began hesitantly, "Do you think it could have been you?"

"Yes, it was me," he confirmed.

"No I mean, you – this you – from the future?"

"Impossible," he snapped. "That would mean I'd crossed my own timeline."

"Yeah, but you said you were trying to give yourself a warning," Rose argued. "Maybe you thought it was important enough for that."

"Nothing could be that important," the doctor returned.

"What if there's a huge threat in the future?" Rose asked. "Something that put the entire planet at risk?"

"That would be even more of a reason to not cross my timeline," the doctor informed her. "Trying to change big events is tricky at the best of times – crossing my own timeline would undoubtedly cause more harm than good. It could cause the entire universe to collapse."

"Have you ever crossed your timeline since that time with my dad?" she asked.

The doctor remembered how horribly that had turned out. "I did to prove to Martha that the TARDIS travelled in time," he replied, frowning. "But I didn't try to talk to myself. I never ran into myself. The universe can adapt for cheap tricks, but trying to give myself a warning… I don't think anything could convince me to do that."

"What do you want to do?" Rose asked, concerned.

"I don't know that there's anything_ to _do," he returned. "Just keep our eyes open and hope it doesn't happen again."

"Okay," she agreed. "Shall we head in, then?"

"You go," he said. "I'm going to try and run some more tests, just to be sure."

"Sure," she said. "See you tonight."

"Yeah, see you," he replied, his mind already focused on the task at hand.

* * *

"Doctor."

"What is it?" the doctor asked irritably. He had been continuing to run tests in the TARDIS, and was not in the mood to deal with Jackie Tyler.

"Doctor," she repeated. "You weren't answering the phone."

He turned at the tone of her voice, and saw her standing in the doorway with her eyes filled with tears. "Jackie, what is it; what's wrong?"

"It's Rose," she choked out.

"Rose, what's wrong; what happened to Rose?" he demanded, advancing on Jackie until he was right in front of her.

"Pete just called," Jackie explained, stifling a sob. "He said that there was a drunk driver."

"What are you saying?" the doctor demanded.

"He drove into her lane, doctor," Jackie sobbed. "She tried to swerve and avoid him but I guess she lost control of the vehicle. It hit a tree and… she never made it into work. They brought her to the hospital, but it was already too late!"

The doctor felt as though his veins had been filled with ice. "No," he murmured.

"She died, doctor," Jackie cried. "After everything she's been through… She got run off the road by some drunken idiot!"

The doctor stood frozen for a moment, Jackie sobbing in front of him. "No," he said finally. "I don't believe that. Shut the door," he instructed, turning back towards the TARDIS console.

"What?"

"SHUT THE DOOR!"

No sooner had the door clicked into place than he had fired up the TARDIS. "Which hospital?"

"You're not supposed to fly the TARDIS-"

"Just tell me!" he interrupted. She did.

How many times had Rose insisted that they drove, like normal people, rather than flying the TARDIS to work? She had seen him mess up their flight coordinates (in time as well as space) too many times to let him fly it for every day type of trips. But this was different. He needed to be there. Now.

* * *

The doctor parked the TARDIS in a supply closet in the hospital basement before following Jackie up to the ER. His mind was still racing, trying to find ways to explain how this couldn't be true. _It was the wrong car. There was a mistake. It was the right car, but the wrong patient. She's actually fine. This isn't even actually real. It's a nightmare. Any second now, I'll wake up…_

Pete was waiting for them. And just seeing his face – the Doctor knew. His face was contorted with grief. His body seemed heavy with suffering. Slowly, he opened his arms to allow Jackie to fall into them.

The Doctor's usually keen mind seemed to be firing off random thoughts too quickly for him to catch them. "Where's Rose?" he asked, still denying the awful truth.

The couple didn't seem to hear, Jackie sobbing into Pete's chest, Pete's eyes staring at something no one could see. "What happened?" the doctor demanded aggressively.

"They said," Pete managed, before having to clear his throat. "They said that she died on impact. She did didn't feel a thing."

"At least," Jackie sobbed, "she didn't suffer. That's something."

"That's nothing," the doctor spat. "And I won't believe that she's gone," he denied desperately. "Where is she? I need to see her."

It took some convincing, and then some waiting, before someone finally led him back to a sectioned off area of the ER, behind a curtain. He whipped his way past it. "Rose?" he asked.

And it was her, but it wasn't her. She was too still, too cold, too unresponsive. "Rose!" his voice broke in a sob. "Rose, no. Don't do this." He threw himself over her, hands trailing along her stone cold cheeks. "Rose, you promised," he reminded her still form through his tears. "You said forever!"

* * *

The Doctor sat alone in the TARDIS, still in a state of partially numb denial. How could Rose have died alone on the highway? How could one stupid ape have gotten drunk and accomplished what no other life form, Daleks to quite possibly the Devil himself, had been able to do?

The doctor buried his face in his hands, fighting against tears because that would mean accepting that she was gone. And he could not, for one moment, believe that she was never coming back. He couldn't give up on her.

Temptation to go back and change time like he hadn't experienced since the fall of his own planet came over him. The death of all the Time Lords was not only an event that he was present for, but also a big event. The universe would implode if he went back to save his people.

But one human woman… one human woman who was not even meant to be in this world…. Surely if this world could accept the addition of Rose Tyler where she hadn't been before then it could do it again? She hadn't been born here; surely her death wasn't fixed here either? And if it was in flux, couldn't he change it?

Wild with hope, the doctor leapt up and began pulling levers and turning dials on the console. He would have to cross his timeline… but if he avoided himself, and spoke only directly to Rose, then he couldn't cause too much harm, could he?

"Like a little paper cut," he said aloud. "Any damage done to time will fix on its own."

_Nothing could convince me to do it. _But that was before. Now he knew different. Small events could be trifled with, as long as proper caution was used. _A small event to the universe, perhaps, _the doctor thought. _But everything to me. _


	2. Warning

The Doctor parked the TARDIS on the corner of the street where he lived with Rose. He didn't dare bring it right into their yard where there was another TARDIS. On the flight over, the TARDIS had been giving him all kinds of warnings, but he had shut them off. It had been a struggle to land her. He knew his machine was not pleased with him.

He broke into a run, racing into his own yard just as Rose was leaving the TARDIS that morning. She was walking towards their vehicle. He broke into an even faster run, finally crashing into her and sweeping her right off the ground into his arms.

"Doctor!" she exclaimed. "What are you doing?"

"Rose," was all he managed. He gripped her even tighter, fighting his own emotions. She was here, warm, and breathing.

She interrupted his relief to ask, "How'd you get over here so quickly? I was just talking to you in the TARDIS. And I'm sure you came from the other direction."

He finally let go, somewhat reluctantly, and his guilty eyes met hers.

"You didn't," she gasped.

"Rose, I had to."

"I thought you said nothing could make you cross your own timeline!" she argued. "What on earth were you thinking? The universe could be fracturing right now!" She began scanning the sky, as though she might see the fault lines forming.

"It'll be fine, I just need a few minutes," he said. "I just had to warn you."

"What, you couldn't warn yourself, now you're going to warn me?" Rose asked. "What's so important?"

The Doctor frowned. In the events that had followed, he had forgotten about seeing another version of himself earlier that morning. "But I didn't try and speak to myself," he mused aloud. "I didn't dare try that."

"But then… oh my God, does that mean you do it again?"

"No!" the Doctor exclaimed. "It would be too risky. A third version of myself, and interacting with a past self? No way."

"But how else could it have happened?"

"I don't know; maybe me being here has already changed that. It doesn't matter."

"It doesn't matter?" Rose echoed. "Of course it does. Doctor, what's gotten you so worked up?"

The Doctor just stared at her, fear and love for her both warring for a position in his gaze.

Rose took in his expression, and her demeanor changed. She slowly began to relax the muscles that had been tensed with agitation, visually seeming to shrink. "It's me isn't it?" Rose guessed. "Tell me, Doctor."

"Yes."

She stepped towards him and he immediately wrapped his arms around her again, holding her tightly.

"How?" she asked when they broke apart.

"Drunk driver on the highway."

She nodded, trying to process this information.

"Rose, just don't drive into work today."

"Doctor," she sighed, "you know we're not supposed to meddle with time like that."

"Some events are fixed, some are in flux," the Doctor argued desperately. "This is in flux; I can change it, I know it!"

"Do you?" Rose asked. "Or do you just want it to be?"

"We'd all be dead already if it wasn't," he said with as much confidence as he could.

"Maybe just being here talking to you has already changed it," Rose said. "The timing's off."

"Don't risk it," the Doctor advised.

"Fine," she sighed. "I'd rather not die, if I can help it," she attempted to joke.

The Doctor was too stressed to find any humor in the statement. "What are you going to do?"

"I suppose I'll call my Dad and see if he can give me a lift. Blimey, I feel like I'm fifteen again. What am I supposed to tell him?"

"Say that I've used all the petrol again," the Doctor suggested. "And you'll need to pick up a can on the way home."

"You would do that too," Rose accused him, her grin showing that she was amused rather than annoyed.

The Doctor also managed to smile, the memory of her irritation with him last month funny now. "Now, you go on and get out of here before the universe implodes or something," she said.

The Doctor swept her into one last lingering hug and pressed his lips against hers before heading back to the TARDIS that was parked on the corner of the street. "There you go old girl," he told his ship as he fired it up. "That wasn't so bad, was it?"

The image of Rose shaking her head and grinning at him as he left filled his mind, and he smiled.

The TARDIS settled into its usual spot in the backyard. "Rose!" the Doctor called, running into the house. But of course, she wasn't there yet. He looked at the clock on the wall. She was still at work. Maybe he would head in too.

Before he had even left the room, the phone rang. He considered letting the answerphone pick up, then decided to get it. "Hello?"

"Doctor, it's me."

It was Jackie. And by the sound of it, she was trying to talk through her tears. The Doctor gripped the table where the phone sat to steady himself. It was impossible. He was supposed to have changed what had happened!

"What happened?" the Doctor choked out.

"The hospital just called me," she explained thickly. "They said that Pete and Rose got hit by a drunk driver on the way to work."

"What happened?" the Doctor repeated, though he already knew.

"They didn't make it," Jackie sobbed.

The Doctor hung up the phone and sunk to the ground. It hadn't worked; he had made things even worse. He had changed the events, but Rose had still died. Right now, she would be lying cold and still in that sectioned off part of the ER. The memory of tracing hands over her stone cold cheeks made his palms tingle.

"No!" he cried to the room at large. He couldn't accept it. He couldn't lose Rose.


	3. Reckless

The Doctor burst through the TARDIS doors. Reckless in the face of what had happened, he didn't even hesitate this time before he fired up his ship. The image of a car circling round a church over and over until Pete Tyler had stepped in front of it filled his mind. Right now on the highway between home and Torchwood, was there a drunk driver circling, just waiting for Rose to turn up? He pushed the thought away viciously.

The ship shook angrily as he tried to force it through the vortex to the same point in time as the previous trip. "Come on old girl!" he shouted, whacking the console with a mallet. Danger warnings flashed on the screen. "I know, I know," he told the time machine. He finally managed to force it to land by materializing just after the second version of him had vanished.

Already having nearly pushed the limit of recklessness, he had parked even closer to home and as a result, he could see Rose, still alive and standing in the drive where he'd last seen her. She had pulled out her cell phone, about to call her father when she saw the Doctor running full tilt towards her.

"You have _got_ to be kidding me."

The Doctor didn't say anything in response. He skidded to halt and embraced her, but she didn't return it. She stood stiff with agitation until he released her. The expression on her face looked remarkably like that of Jackie Tyler before she had slapped him, and he took a step back.

"What are you thinking?" she stormed. "You're risking the entire universe! The entire thing could fracture! I'm not having it Doctor, not for anything!"

"I took precautions; I didn't land at the same time as the other," he insisted. "What else could I do, Rose?"

She considered telling him exactly what he should have done, but hesitated at the look on his face. He was already here anyway, whatever damage was to come had already been done. She sighed heavily. "You shouldn't have done it."

"I can't lose you," he countered.

"I'm not worth the universe."

"You are to me."

They held each other's gaze in silence. Finally Rose asked, "I suppose it didn't work then?"

"Made things worse," the Doctor recalled.

"So you thought you should try it again, knowing that things were worse last time you tried?" He didn't answer. What could he say? "Well, anyway," she continued, "I suppose I'm calling in today?"

He nodded. "Don't get in that car," he insisted. "In fact, don't get in any car. Don't go on the road."

"Yeah, alright," she agreed, though her irritation was still plain. "But what about the other you? The one in the TARDIS in the back yard right now?"

"Should disappear," the Doctor replied.

"Should?" Rose asked. "You're not sure?"

"Well, I can't know for sure," the Doctor said defensively. "I've never done this before."

"What if you, he, whatever, comes in here?" Rose demanded.

"I didn't," the Doctor answered. "I stayed in the TARDIS all day, or at least, until Jackie came over…" He let his sentence trail away, a wave of cold washing over him at the memory.

"What happened after that?" Rose asked, her concern mounting with a thought that had just occurred to her.

"We left," the Doctor replied. "Took the TARDIS to the hospital."

"Yeah, but what's going to happen now that my Mum's not going to show up?"

The Doctor frowned, thinking, while Rose's worry grew even more. "I'm not sure," he replied. "Different events happened, so I think he should vanish when Jackie doesn't show up."

"But if Mum never comes over, then you never come here," Rose reasoned.

The Doctor frowned, concentrating. "Maybe I'll vanish," he deducted. "If you don't die, then it's my timeline that never happens, not his."

"This is starting to hurt my head," Rose groused. "If you're going to vanish, maybe you should just get out of here."

"I don't think it matters where I am," the Doctor said. "My timeline will still end up being one that never happened."

"I don't want to see you disappear," Rose said.

"But I won't, not really," the Doctor said brightly. "I'm still out there; totally oblivious to what might have happened."

"I know," she said. "But I still don't want to see it. I think I'm going to go and tell you I'm not going to work. And you know, let you know how casually you take the potential destruction of the universe."

"Oh now," the Doctor said, "It wasn't a casual decision. I know what I'm doing."

"Sure you do," she laughed.

They parted ways in the yard. The Doctor wondered if he might vanish before he even reached his time machine. His personal history would be altered as soon as Rose went in to talk to him.

He stepped into the familiar console room and set the controls to random. He would likely cease to exist as soon as he tried to enter the time vortex anyway.

To his great surprise, the TARDIS entered the time vortex relatively smoothly, and with both him and it still in existence. Then to his horror, all the audio and visual warnings contained on the ship began firing at once. The console room took on an angry red colour. He was being pulled into a paradox.


	4. Paradox

The Doctor poked his head gingerly out of the front door of the TARDIS. What he saw was the angry red console room of his ship. Confused, he pulled his head back in. How could there be a console room on both sides of the door? It was as he poked his head out again that he saw someone standing in the other console room.

"Hello?" he asked cautiously. The figure stepped forward, and he saw himself. He looked terrible: exhausted, face contorted in misery, body sagging as though weighted by a coat made of lead. Was that how he looked now?

"It doesn't work," the other Doctor said without preamble. "Nothing I… we, try works."

"I don't understand," the Doctor replied.

The other Doctor gritted his teeth, clenching his jaw before seeming to pry it open to force the words out. "Rose still dies. I keep trying but nothing works."

"But… what?" the Doctor asked. "Where've you come from?"

"Rose came to talk to me… today, I think," he began. "Today might have been a month ago now, for all I know. It's hard to keep track when I keep repeating. She was distracted, but then she said something along the lines of warning me against crossing my own timeline, no matter what happened. I just thought she was referring to the other version of me that showed up in our room that morning. I suppose that was you?"

"No," the Doctor replied. "It wasn't me."

For a moment, both Doctors frowned in confusion, but then the other's expression returned to one of desolation. "Doesn't matter," he said. He picked up where he had left off. "I didn't really think too much of it, but… When she was gone, I tried to go back and change it. But then I saw the TARDIS vanishing."

"That _was_ me," the Doctor said.

"That's when I realized that I must have already tried to warn her."

"She didn't listen?" the Doctor asked. "She drove into work anyway? But _why_?"

"She learned her lesson too well," the other said bitterly.

"What do you mean?"

"I went over to confront her, demand to know what happened," the other spoke in a monotone, reciting the events as detached as possible. "She was furious. Said I'd damaged time, and we were lucky nothing horrible had happened yet. She said she was thinking about the time she tried to save her Dad, and what had happened."

"That was different-" the Doctor said quickly, but was cut off by the other.

"I tried to argue that too," he said. "But she wasn't having it. Said I was risking the universe. I couldn't reason with her."

"So you just gave up?" the Doctor demanded.

"No," the other countered. "I tried going back further. Convince her to get in the TARDIS for a quick vacation, bring her back a few days later. She'd be in a right foul mood when she realized we'd arrived back off by a few days, but at least she'd live."

"Well, why didn't that work?"

"We've already been back too many times. Rose was right, in a way. We've made a small rift. Just enough to pull the TARDIS in."

"Right back to the same damn day," the Doctor realized, recalling the rift he had seen when running scans that morning. The other nodded despondently.

"As it turns out, there are multiple aborted timelines at work here. I have no idea how many. I ran into a couple of them. Apparently we've also tried using guilt to force her to change her mind, by telling Jackie and bringing her in. We've tried getting the police to close the road. We've tried finding the drunk driver and getting him out of there. We've even gotten desperate enough to try and force Rose not to leave – against her will."

"Never," the Doctor gasped, horrified.

"There are a lot of things we've done that we said we never would," the other countered. In any case, the point is that we really put a dent in time and space for that day. I thought the only way to avoid it was to go back and get her, and bring her away through space instead of time. But as soon as I set the coordinates back for Earth, we got pulled into the rift again, so I had to head back to the planet we were visiting. I couldn't tell her why without explaining everything."

"I bet she took that well," the Doctor said, the ghost of a smile playing at his lips.

"I've never seen her so angry," the other agreed. "We would have had to stay away forever to avoid that day, and she wasn't having it. I gave it one last shot, telling her I'd take her back if she would just please, please not get in the car."

"What did she say?"

"She said that maybe it was her time. That if I couldn't stop it, maybe there was a reason."

The Doctor shook his head vehemently. "No. I won't accept that."

"I couldn't watch her die again," the other Doctor continued as though he hadn't heard the protests. "Do you know; I was there on the side of the highway once? I thought I might be able to blow out that other car's tire with the sonic before he could drive her off of the road. But there were other cars in the way, and in any case, that would likely have just caused a pile-up and killed even more people, wouldn't it?" He didn't wait for a response before continuing. "When the car came towards her she tried to swerve and avoid it, but it ran her right of the road. She hit a tree. Car was crumpled up and had her pinned. But that's not what killed her. Would you like to know what did?"

He didn't, but he had clenched his jaw so tightly that he couldn't release it to tell the other so.

"A tree branch," the other Doctor said. His eyes were unfocussed, looking at the scene from his memory. "It went right through the windscreen, straight through her. She didn't have a chance. I didn't know that right away of course; I had to go and see. Branch was sticking right out the middle of her chest. There wasn't as much blood as you might expect, the branch stopped it from flowing I suppose, and it also put a stop to her heart. I think it might have pierced right through it-"

"Stop it," the Doctor spat, finally finding his voice. "Just stop." He had seen plenty of dead bodies in his time, but the gruesome picture painted in his mind's eye was too much to handle. He felt like he was going to be sick.

Having no sympathy, or perhaps having been so emotionally wrecked by what he had witnessed, the other Doctor picked up the tale in his expressionless monotone again. "So I came in here and set up the paradox, allowing us both to be here at the same time. I knew you'd get pulled into the rift at some point and I'd bring you right here."

"What was the point of that?"

"To tell you… I can't think of anything else to try."

"There's got to be something – I won't give up!"

The other doctor looked up at him with tired, empty, eyes. "That's what I'm trying to tell you," he said flatly. "You _have_ given up."


	5. Cause and Effect

Despite what the other version of him had said, the Doctor couldn't believe that he had given up, or would give up. Tenses became tricky when meddling with time. The other Doctor had given him an idea though. Setting up a paradox for that morning… Could he perhaps warn himself not to go back? Or to go back before the other aborted timelines only once, thus getting rid of the rift and allowing him to get Rose past this day?

He wasn't sure it would work. All he knew was that he had to try. He had to do something. The console room was still an angry red, and maintained its sinister glow as he tried to force it back through the rift to the morning that had started these events. His ship protested loudly, engines screaming, warnings blasting, danger signs flashing across the screen. "Come on!" he yelled. He whacked every inch of the controls he could reach with his mallet, while clinging to a bar for dear life as the ship pitched and heaved as though caught in a vicious storm.

Finally, it had settled into the grass, still shuddering and now smoking ominously. And it was struggling for good reason – he had parked right next to the TARDIS, from earlier. Despite the paradox being maintained, it was still something that wasn't meant to happen. Though he couldn't see in the console rooms now that he had exited the angry machine, he knew that both ships would be glowing red and working overdrive to try and keep the paradox working for as long as they were both present at the same point in time and space.

But he had been messing with time to such a degree already – each trip with a few less misgivings until he had now done this. Single minded determination had taken over. He sprinted across the yard, and was just about to fling open the back door when he remembered to be quiet. Slowly and cautiously he crept up the stairs to the bedroom he shared with Rose, narrowly avoiding her as she wandered out that morning. Clearly, there was no reasoning with her. He would have to speak to himself.

He went into the room and closed the door, but his previous self had his head in the closet and was humming, not noticing him, or perhaps mistaking him for Rose. The Doctor paused, swallowing, and steadied his nerves for what he was about to do. The other Doctor, now dressed, still hadn't noticed him until he approached the mirror.

The Doctor ignored his former self's surprise, concentrating on what he had to say. "Please," he begged. "Please it's important. You've got to get it right the first time, to avoid making a rift…" his sentence trailed off. He had been pulled back in the console room. The controls were spitting sparks, the engines screaming. The heart of his ship was alive – and it had had enough. With a great heaving effort, the TARDIS broke back into the time vortex.

"NO!" the Doctor screamed. "I wasn't done yet! Go back! Go _back_!"

The only response he got was a vast amount of acrid black smoke pouring out of the ship, and the sound of the vents switching into overdrive to clear it. The ship was heading back in time automatically, trying to escape the rift, and the Doctor forced it to land only a few hours earlier, burning his hands on the piping hot metal controls in the process.

The TARDIS materialized a block away from their house at about three in the morning, the noise of the engines turning over sounding remarkably like a chastisement. The Doctor sunk down to the ground, his blistered hands resting limply next to him. He was at a complete loss as to what to do next.

He sat in silent desolation for some time before considering something he had learned. He had found out how a version of himself had landed in their bedroom that morning, and then disappeared; not to mention the warning he had been giving. It was this latest visit that had him investigating and discovering the very rift that he had thought small and inconsequential. And it was, in the reference of crossing from parallel worlds – not nearly large or powerful enough for that. But powerful enough to stop him from saving Rose.

If only it had never happened. There was never any point in entertaining if only's, but he couldn't help himself. If only he had been able to just go into work with Rose that morning, and then come home, and had a completely normal day…

Suddenly, he jumped up. "It was _me_," he said aloud.

He threw himself out the doors and used his sonic screwdriver to send the TARDIS back into the time vortex without him. He didn't want to be interrupted in what he had to do – what he was meant to do. It seemed almost fateful that he had been able to keep going back and changing what happened. Like he wasn't quite getting it right, so the universe kept letting him have another go, but he was going about it wrong.

Because if he hadn't shown up in their room that morning, he wouldn't have been running scans in the TARDIS. He would have been going to work with Rose that morning. And none of the scenarios that had been mentioned to him involved that. He had never been in the car with Rose when it happened.

By creating the paradox and trying to stop what had happened, he had been the one to cause it to happen in the first place. "I've been so _stupid_," he moaned. "I've been thinking of time in a straight line." He had been going back to try and change what had happened, thinking of Rose's death as the cause of the rift rather than the effect. Because if his timeline was straight, then he had only started coming back after she died. But time wasn't a straight line – and Rose had actually died _after _he started coming back. In essence, he should have been in the car with her, but he had changed that without even realizing what he had done.

He waited outside their house until he was sure Rose was awake, and then rushed into the kitchen before his other self could come down. She was already dressed and wearing her Torchwood ID, just as she had been before the paradox had allowed him to meddle with time.

"I'm ready," he announced, making her jump.

"Blimey, that was fast," she said.

"Yup," he agreed, popping the last letter, "I'm just raring to go this morning. Hurry, Rose, let's go." He had to get her out of there before his previous self showed up in their room. If she heard him talking to himself, she would know something was wrong.

She allowed him to rush her out the door, remarking over his eagerness. "What's gotten you so excited?" she asked, laughing.

"I'd like to drive today," he said instead of answering.

"Would you?" she asked, still amused with him and wondering why he was so antsy.

"I insist on it," he replied, hoping she wouldn't notice how desperate he was for her to agree. But, even if she were to drive, he could still grab the wheel at the crucial moment. He could still set the day's events right.

"Yeah, alright," she conceded, interrupting his silent scheming.

He jumped in and started the engine. He had already backed out of the lane before she had her belt on. "Are you ever in a rush!" she exclaimed. "Anything you want to tell me?"

He glanced over to meet her eyes, before flicking them back to the road again. "Just this," he said, chancing a longer look to her. "I love you."

"I love you too," she returned, surprised by how serious he had become all of a sudden.

They remained silent for a while, glancing unobtrusively at each other from time to time. "What happened to your hands!" she exclaimed suddenly, catching sight of the blistered skin as he shifted them to make a turn.

"Nothing, it doesn't matter."

As they turned onto the highway, the doctor met her eyes again. "Rose," he asked, "Do you trust me?"

"Yes," she replied. "Why?"

"Don't try to change this, okay?" he asked. "This is the way it was supposed to be. It's your time to live, and it's my time to die."

"Doctor, you're scaring me," Rose told him. "What are you talking about?"

"Just trust me," he instructed. "It'll be okay, Rose. I love you."

"I love _you_," she said. "But I don't understand…" she trailed off, having glanced out the front window. "Doctor!" she screamed.

But he had known it was coming, had already seen the car veering towards them and yanked the wheel to avoid a collision. The collision had killed both Rose and Pete. But he knew what had to happen instead.

Rose screamed again as the car soared right off of the road, and slammed her feet into a non-existent brake as the car veered straight towards a large tree with low-hanging branches. "_Doctor_!"

The windscreen shattered, showering Rose in glass as she was pitched forward, the seat belt digging into her. She slammed back into the seat, her breath exploding from her in a forced exhalation. The airbag slammed into her just as she started to think it might be over. She sat stunned for a moment before shoving the deflating airbag away from her face. Then, "Doctor?" she asked.

For a split second, she thought he was watching her. His face was turned towards her, eyes open and unblinking, head hanging limply. But he wasn't looking at her. He wasn't looking at anything at all. She screamed for the third time, high and loud, not stopping until she ran out of breath. "No," she sobbed, reaching for him. She half expected him to start regenerating. But of course, that was impossible. A branch from the tree was piercing his single, human, heart.


	6. Choice

Epilogue

The Doctor was just finishing buttoning his suit when he saw it. His own reflection was in the mirror, only there were two.

"What?" he demanded, spinning around. The other version of him remained.

"Please," it begged. "Please it's important. You've got to-" And then it was gone.

The doctor shook his head, wondering if he was losing it completely. How had another version of him landed in his bedroom? Was it the version of him from the parallel world crossing through?

"Rose?" he asked. "Rose, something strange just happened." He paused, listening. "Rose!" he called.

He left the bedroom, clomping down the stairs and into the kitchen. "Rose?" Peering out the front window, he saw that their vehicle was already gone. "She left without me!" he exclaimed indignantly. He knew that she was ready before him, but to go without him…

Perhaps something had happened. The appearance of another version of him had the Doctor on edge. He considered flying the TARDIS to Torchwood despite Rose's warnings, weighing her potential anger against his current annoyance and nagging worry. He settled instead on the thought of running scans in his ship to see if there was a tear in the universe allowing a parallel version of him to cross it.

Once inside his ship, he tried calling Rose's cell phone, but she didn't answer. Instead, it went right to voicemail. He left her a rather irritated message before beginning to run his intended scans. Had he not been so distracted, he might have realized his ship's engines seemed to be working rather harder than usual.

Not long after, the Doctor was frowning in the console room. "There's no evidence of any rifts," he said aloud. "Well," he immediately added, tilting his head, "There is one rift. Just one small rift, but it's not between worlds. It's just like a small blip in time, nothing that could allow another version of me to cross from a parallel world." He looked around as though expecting Rose to have returned, and feeling a rather strong sense of _déjà vu. _

Scans now complete, the Doctor wasn't sure what else he could do. He once again strongly considered flying his ship to Torchwood, but the strange events of the morning had him hesitating. He went back into the house, where Rose still hadn't returned, and neither had she left a message on the home phone. Now he was really getting worried.

He tried calling her again, and it went straight to voicemail for the second time. He left her another message, having no way of knowing that her phone lay abandoned on the floor of their crashed vehicle. He called Torchwood, having to give his ID over and over until he was finally connected with their office. When he was finally speaking to one of their team members, he was informed that Rose had never arrived at work.

Truly panicking now, the Doctor considered hopping straight into his ship to search for her, but he didn't know where to begin. He began pacing in a circle, wondering what on earth Rose was doing. Finally, he decided to go over to Pete and Jackie's to see if she was there. If she wasn't, he would try calling her one more time before applying more drastic search measures.

It was a fifteen minute walk to the Tyler's manor, and the Doctor had a lot of nervous energy to burn. He was beginning to think that he should have just thrown all caution to the winds and taken his ship to their place instead of walking. But worry seemed to have numbed his mind, and the thought hadn't occurred to him until he was more than halfway there anyway.

The Doctor had just reached a hand out to knock on their front door when Pete and Jackie's vehicle pulled into the drive. The Doctor squinted through the glass to try and see if Rose was with them. Through the open window of the vehicle, he heard Jackie cry, "It's him!"

The Doctor turned to look across the yard to try and figure out who she was talking about. She shouldn't sound that surprised to see him. But he didn't see anyone else, and the next thing he knew, Jackie had trapped him in an embrace. "Doctor, you're alive!"

"Of course I'm alive," the Doctor replied blankly. "Why shouldn't I be? And where's Rose? I've been trying to reach her all morning!"

"But you were dead!" Jackie exclaimed, mercifully releasing him.

"No," the Doctor countered, still completely nonplussed. "I'm right here. I think I would have noticed if I'd died."

"But how?" Pete asked disbelievingly, looking at the Doctor like he was some kind of miracle. "How are you alive?"

"The more urgent question right now," the Doctor interrupted, "Is where on earth is Rose? Have either of you seen her today?"

"We just dropped her off," Jackie replied, her voice shaking slightly. "She said she wanted to be left alone. I didn't think we should leave her, but she was so insistent in wanting to be alone to grieve…"

"To grieve?" the Doctor echoed.

"Because you're dead!" Jackie screeched, smacking his arm. "And now you're standing here like you don't even know what we're talking about!"

"I _don't_ know what you're talking about," he replied.

Pete took over, explaining, "I don't know how you can be here… But you and Rose got in a car crash this morning."

"What?" the Doctor asked, discounting their insistence that he was present for events he didn't remember for the time being. "Is Rose okay?"

"She's fine…" Pete trailed off, still looking bewildered. "But… you died."

"Obviously there's been some mistake," the Doctor insisted.

"I saw your body," Pete countered, inviting no arguments in his tone of voice.

"Before the bloody hospital lost it," Jackie added. "Tell me, how does a corpse just vanish in the middle of the hospital? Lucky I had finally persuaded Rose to leave at that point, I don't know how she would have handled that… Better that they told Pete, I'm sure he was a lot more polite than I would've been. I would have torn them a new-"

"I've got to get back home," the Doctor said, interrupting Jackie's tirade. He had no idea what was going on here, but it could all wait until he'd gotten back to Rose.

* * *

Rose stood alone in the familiar console room. She had already sent her parents away. She couldn't bear them trying to comfort her. Didn't they understand that nothing could bring her any comfort?

The engines seemed to be humming louder and more irregularly, as though they had recently been working harder than usual. Rose had no idea why that would be, and thought that maybe she was just more sensitive to it than before. She trailed a hand over the many levers and dials without seeing them, unable to get the image of the Doctor from her mind.

His words shortly before the crash came back to her. _It's your time to live, and it's my time to die. _But how could he possibly know that? He may have been a Time Lord, but he wasn't all-knowing.

Her sleeve got caught on part of the console, tugging her mind back to the present along with her arm. She pulled it free and continued to trail her hand over the controls, more purposely now. He had started teaching her to fly the TARDIS over the past year. She couldn't land in far off places with any degree of accuracy yet, but she had set the coordinates for home on multiple occasions…

But that would be too dangerous. That would put the entire planet at risk. Hadn't she learned how dire the consequences of messing with time could be when she tried to save her Dad? Still, she probably _could _travel back home a day or two into the past even if she _shouldn't_.

The image of the Doctor's empty stare came back to her, unbidden. She sunk to the ground and cried quietly into her hands, her sobs growing more body-wracking as she recalled the branch sticking straight into him like some kind of horror film. She wrapped her arms tightly around her middle and rocked herself for a time, until she was sure she had no more tears left to shed.

_Don't try to change this, okay? This is the way it was supposed to be. _But he wasn't here now. The choice was hers.

* * *

**A/N: Thank you to everyone who took the time to read this story.**


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